NIAD-UE Seminar – 28 Jul 15

Academic Integrity
Dr Tim P Burton
Head of Standards, Quality and Enhancement
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education
United Kingdom

Overview• UK Quality Code for Higher Education• Understanding Assessment• Three perspectives:• Institutional• Staff• Student• Good academic practice• Unacceptable academic practice2

The UK Quality Code …
As co-regulation

As a resourceExpectations

Introduction to each chapter– the ‘spirit’ of the chapter

Express key principles that thehigher education community has Indicators of soundidentified as essential for thepracticeassurance of academic• Illustrate ways of meeting thestandards and quality.
Expectation
Part A: 7
Part B: 11
Part C: 1• Help reflection• Not mandatory or exhaustive• Not models for imitation

Explanatory text
• Unpacks the indicators
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General Introduction
Part APart B

Part C

Setting andMaintaining
AcademicStandards

Assuring andEnhancing
Academic
Quality

Information
about Higher
Education
Provision

4Terminology

5Understanding academic integrity:
understanding assessment in the UK• Assessment as a form of learning• Assessment as an exercise of professional judgement• Developing ‘good academic practice’• Securing academic standards and fairness

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Academic integrity in the UK Quality
CodeChapter B6: Assessment of students and therecognition of prior learning
Expectation:

Higher education providers operate equitable,
valid and reliable processes of assessment,
including for the recognition of prior learning,which enable every student to demonstrate theextent to which they have achieved theintended learning outcomes for the credit or
qualification being sought.
7Chapter B6: the ‘spirit’ of the chapter• Two purposes of assessment:• Students learn from assessment: ‘feedback’ and‘feedforward’• The ‘recursive cycle, or feedback loop’ (QAA,2007)• Staff make judgements about the extent to which thelearning outcomes have been achieved8Three perspectives
Institutional

StudentStaff

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Institutional perspective
Institutional

StudentStaff

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The institutional perspective• Degree-awarding body or delivery organisation?
• Part A of the Quality Code: Securing standards Academic frameworks and regulations• Part B: quality of the student learning experience• Meeting the Expectation in chapter B6• Assessment carried out securely• Processes for marking and moderation• Regulations governing unacceptable practice• Regulations governing progression• Ensuring staff are ‘competent’

11Staff perspective
InstitutionalStudentStaff

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The staff perspective
Indicator 5Assessment and feedback practices are informed byreflection, consideration of professional practice,and subject-specific and educational scholarship.

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The staff perspective (2)Key stages of assessment:• Designing assessment as part of the learning,teaching and assessment strategy for the programme
and its constituent modules• Designing in assessment for learning• Designing out plagiarism or cheating• Developing grading and assessment criteria• Marking and moderation (internal and external)

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The staff perspective (3): focusing on
early career staff• QAA’s approach to supporting early career staff –developing a guide• How and why it was developed

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Student perspective
Institutional

StudentStaff

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The student perspective
The developmental
approach

The securing
standards approach• Assessment literacy• Engagement in, andresponsibility for,learning• Good academic
practice• Unacceptable
academic practice• Identifying/detecting• Penalising• Deterring

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The student perspective (2)Assessment literacy

Indicator 6
Staff and students engage in dialogue to promote ashared understanding of the basis on which
academic judgements are made.

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The student perspective (3)• Promoting engagement in learning - partnershipwith students in their learning (see also Chapter B3:
Learning and Teaching• Promoting responsibility by students for theirlearning behaviour (e.g. Academic Integrity Service,2010)

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The student perspective (4)‘Good academic practice’
Indicator 7

Students are provided with opportunities to develop
an understanding of, and the necessary skills todemonstrate, good academic practice.

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The student perspective (5)‘Good academic practice’:• Consistent referencing and citation• Application to all sources of information• Ethical behaviour• Confidentiality• Individual and group contributions• Clarity of assessment rules and referencing
requirements
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The student perspective (6)‘Unacceptable academic practice’

Indicator 14
Higher education providers operate processes forpreventing, identifying, investigating andresponding to unacceptable academic practice.
• Fairness to all students: the academic integrity of UK
HE qualifications• Fairness to the individual student22

The student perspective (7)‘Unacceptable academic practice’• Plagiarism, collusion, impersonation• Identification and reporting• Understanding why students resort to plagiarism orother forms of cheating• (Further: Carroll, 2013, ASKe - Assessment Standards
Knowledge Exchange)
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The student perspective (8)• Using software (e.g. Turnitin):• to detect• as a developmental tool (Heather, 2010)• Investigating allegations – imposing appropriate
penalties (the professional misconduct element)• Deterring e.g. through signed declarations; throughvisible penalties

24More recent challenges• Essay ‘mills’• MOOCs (massive open online courses)• Advances in technology

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Principal sources
UK Quality Code for Higher Education:
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/assuring-standards-and-quality/the-qualitycode
Build your own Quality Code: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/assuringstandards-and-quality/the-quality-code/build-your-own-quality-codeintro
QAA (2012) Understanding Assessment: Its Role in Safeguarding
Academic Standards and Quality in Higher Education, Second
Edition: www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/understandingassessment.pdf

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Principal sources
Carroll, J, A Handbook for Deterring Plagiarism in Higher Education(2nd ed., revised 2013)
The Higher Education Academy (2012) A Marked Improvement:
Transforming Assessment in Higher Educationwww.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/A_Marked_Improvement.p
df

ASKe Pedagogy Research Centre: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/aske/27

Principal sources
Academic Integrity Service (2010) Supporting academic integrity:
approaches and resources for higher education, The HigherEducation Academy and JISC. Available from: www.heacademy.
ac.uk/academic-integrity
Academic Integrity Service (2011) Policy works: recommendations
for reviewing policy to manage unacceptable academic practice inhigher education. The Higher Education Academy and JISC.
Available from: www.heacademy.ac.uk/academic-integrity
Crisp, G, (2012) Integrative assessment: reframing assessment
practice for current and future learning, Assessment & Evaluation inHigher Education, 37(1), pp33-43

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Principal sources
Heather, J (2010) Turnitoff: Identifying and Fixing a Hole in Current
Plagiarism Detection Software, Assessment & Evaluation in HigherEducation, 35(6), pp 647-660
QAA (2007), Integrative Assessment: Balancing assessment of andassessment for learning, Guide No. 2. Available at:www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/enhancementthemes/completedenhancement-themes/integrative-assessment
Sambell, K, McDowell, L, and Montgomery, C, (2012) Assessmentfor Learning in Higher Education, Routledge, London
Tennant, P and Duggan, F (2008) Academic Misconduct
Benchmarking Research Project: Part 2. The Recorded Incidence ofStudent Plagiarism and the Penalties Applied, available from www.
heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/teachingandlearning/assessment/alldispl
ay?type=projects&newid=AMBeR&site=york29

Thank you!

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qaa.ac.uk
enquiries@qaa.ac.uk+44 (0) 1452 557000© The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education 2015
Registered charity numbers 1062746 and SC037786

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